This invention concerns post ball bearings of the type used for dies comprised of a cage sleeve having a distributed array of ball bearings, each captured in a through pocket hole in the sleeve wall. The balls are sized to protrude from both the inside and outside sleeve diameters when the sleeve is received over a shaft and confined within an outer sleeve.
The balls have conventionally been captured in the pocket holes by machining the holes to have a flange at the inside wall of the sleeve, and the area around each hole at the outer wall of the sleeve is swaged to reduce the hole diameter slightly after the ball is installed to allow the ball to rotate freely therein while preventing its escape.
This swaging has been accomplished in several ways, but typically requires that a separate swaging operation be performed on each hole, which is a slow and expensive process since large numbers of holes are required for each post bearing.
In one commercially available design, pairs of swaged indentations are formed around the sleeve located on either side of each of a series of annular rows of holes in the sleeve.
While somewhat simplifying the manufacturing steps, this method still requires extensive processing time due to the large number of separate swaging operations for each row of balls.
It is the object of the present invention to provide a post bearing of the type described and a method of manufacture which minimizes and simplifies the swaging operations required in securing the balls within the pocket holes in the sleeve cage.